hirechriscranley blog

While I am thinking “outside the box” on my current job search, I am also a closet compulsive when it comes to playing around with anything web 2.0. In as much as the web 2.0 things I check out also support my job searching activities, then I will highlight them in this blog. The following is a quick pro / con evaluation of a new job searching tool called Job Fox:

Overall Impression: Neutral. I will wait to see if this site actually facilitates meaningful employer/employee interaction or just the same spam threads of Yahoo Jobs, Monster, and Dice.

Pros

• This website has a seemingly sophisticated skills assessment mapped to your candidate profile. The process of filling out the skills assessment may seem daunting for someone who does not have 1/2 hour to devote to the activity, but it does build some confidence in the candidate that they are in for a more meaningful “job search”. The interactivity (skills suggestion) experience of their skills list was impressive and the overall performance of the website was acceptable.
• Interesting job ranking algorithm that describes how employer job posting match your skills profile. The fact that I saw / found job postings that were beyond my former professional job functions and industries was impressive. This “job fit” information has the potential to be presented in graphical way (maybe a heat map) for greater end user satisfaction.

Cons

• Could be my specific computer set up, but the website seems to be having some trouble rendering on my Firefox, Mac OS X combo.
• The resume upload and skill assessment section was a bit long. It got the point that I was rushing to fill out the questionnaire just to skip the activity.
• Seems like the service is again following a traditional model of gaining as many candidates for employers as possible based on their skills gimmick - - in place of building / facilitating deeper connections. [Side Note: This is one reason why I believe LinkedIn could be the killer application in the job/recruiting space. JobFox should be an affiliate / partner with LinkedIn if they are interested in competing in this space in a true Web 2.0 way. The next pinnacle for Online Job Search tools is to move beyond being simple "filters of people" and towards "connectors between people".]
• I like the idea of a “trackable resume”, but it isn’t clear how else I can integrate and promote my JobFox profile within their “system” or in the many other tools in my digital life (blogs, IM, Skype, Email, etc). They need to work on creating a job ecosystem that better maps to the API of my life and job searching needs .